Private messages sent during working hours can be read by employers, European court rules

Ruling applies to messages sent during work hours
Privacy: Employers can read workers private messages if they are sent on work time
WestEnd61/Rex Shutterstock
Laura Proto13 January 2016

Bosses can read private messages sent by their employees during working hours, Europe’s top court has ruled.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Tuesday that companies are within their rights to read private messages sent on company time and the move would not violate an individual employee’s right to privacy.

The landmark ruling comes after a Romanian engineer complained his employer had breached article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

Article 8 reads: “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.”

The Romanian worker had his contract terminated in August 2007 after his company found he was using a Yahoo Messenger account set up for work to speak to his brother and fiancée.

The man was approached by his bosses, who had printed a 45-page transcript of his communications with his family members.

The transcript also contained five short messages the man had sent to his fiancée.

After being sacked, the worker took his case to Bucharest County Court before escalating it to the ECHR.

Previous court hearings ruled the employer had been “reasonable” and the monitoring of communications had been the “only method of establishing if there had been a disciplinary breach.”

At a hearing at the ECHR in Strasbourg on Tuesday, the panel agreed there had been no violation of the man's right to privacy.

The worker argued the messaging software was designed for personal use and he expected his communications to be private.

He said if he had not have expected privacy, he would not have disclosed intimate information.

In its ruling, the court said it “is not unreasonable for an employer to want to verify that the employees are completing their professional tasks during working hours.”

The court added the employer had only accessed the messages on the man’s work account because they believed they contained professional communications.

The rulling added: “There has been no violation of this article, since the employer’s monitoring was limited in scope and proportionate.”

The ECHR’s judgements bind all countries, including the UK, that have ratified the European Convention on Human Rights.

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